Saturday, 18 July 2026

LIST 263 – 18/07/2026


(The entrance to Pontins, Camber Sands 26/09/2017, a great many years after the venue bore witness to - among other things - The Lonesome Organist playing four instruments at once during an All Tomorrow's Parties festival.  Picture is author's own)


Hello again,

I'm habitually a bit wary of new releases by musical acts being billed as "events".  

Call it perhaps a hangover of having endured so many Britpop and post-Britpop bands' (frequently underwhelming) new singles being aggressively, extensively promoted as "events" back in the day.  You'd have been forgiven for thinking the release of D'You Know What I Mean? by Oasis was the single most significant event of 1997, musical or otherwise, such was its trailing.

I also have memories of a period in the 2000s when Channel 4 would show world premieres of singles by prominent acts du jour such as Muse, five or so minutes before one of their flagship shows (I want to say on Friday nights, but I do need to check) and often with similarly hyperbolic billing.  

These invariably struck me as potential hidings to nothing for the acts concerned, giving them no place to hide if these new wares were exposed as mediocre compared to previous offerings.  Lucky for some of them that hubris didn't let them worry about that.

As far as I'm concerned, "events" in a musical context are strictly either gigs/concerts or commissions (and in the case of some famous examples over the centuries, such as Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks, both at the same time).  All of which brings us, eventually and circuitously, to a new single from PJ Harvey.

Voyager doesn't owe its creation entirely to Professor Brian Cox, as Polly Harvey had already sketched out the idea of it as a potential future album track.  That draft, however, leapt out at everyone's favourite particle physicist Oldhammer as the perfect vehicle for an event of his own, the live scientific musical stage show Emergence.  In effect, a commission of completed song for completed show was then initiated.

Sonically evoking the signals of the 1977 NASA Voyager space probe, and lyrically surely one of very few songs ever written from the point of view of a spacecraft rather than that of space or of an astronaut (Major Tom it is not), the finally realised version features synth contributions from Cox himself, marking this out as an increasingly rare foray back into making or performing music for the one-time Dare and D:Ream key prodder (a single-song guest appearance for D:Ream at Glastonbury in 2024 is just about all else there's been in recent memory).

For Harvey, it's a further welcome, engaging release in what's been a particularly productive past few years.  Work on the intended parent album of Voyager already appears at least some way on, not yet much more than three years since the release of I Inside The Old Year Dying and its substantial tour, and with late 2024's twin salvo of the London Tide cast recording and the Bad Sisters season #2 soundtrack having been added to the CV in the interim also.

Putting together an anywhere remotely representative A Session of Sorts for her this week was always going to be an impossible ask, all the more so having already surrendered eleven strong candidates to other Lists before now.  I couldn't not include something from Let England Shake (for me still a career high), however, nor 2004's The Desperate Kingdom of Love, having been reminded of the latter's quiet power at Polly's 2024 Halifax Piece Hall concert (another actual event, you'll note).
 
Finishing off this List with compilation semi-rarity Other Galaxies by The Field Mice wasn't an attempt to uphold the space theme of Voyager yet further, by the way - I'd already had this one inked in for The Long Goodbye this week a long time before Polly's newie.  

I can't remember whether this was an outtake from the Sarah Records mainstays' final album For Keeps, but it bears many of the stylistic traits and comparative muscle of much else from that period of the band's evolution.  I'm as certain as I can be that it's the longest track The Field Mice ever let see the light of day, too.

*** 

Elsewhere this week, the inclusion of a track by Rheingold in the Germanophone feature gives us chance to consider briefly their late frontperson Bodo Staiger, arguably the closest the Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave) movement came to anointing any heartthrobs - certainly any cross-disciplinary ones, at least.

That status was consolidated by Staiger's appearance in the 1982 German cult horror movie Der Fan, wherein he starred as a super-famous new-wave singer who, upon rejecting the advances of an obsessive female fan, is killed, frozen and systematically eaten by her.

(The eponymous fan, by the way? A then seventeen year-old Désirée Nosbusch, just two years before she'd host the Eurovision Song Contest in her native Luxembourg. Bet they didn't play any clips of Der Fan on the night).

When not being bumped off by usually wholesome entertainers from miniscule European countries, Staiger could be found at the helm of precise yet insistent, irresistible synthpop tracks such as Dreiklangsdimensionen. That both Staiger and bandmate Lothar Manteuffel would later undertake separate projects with offloaded members of Kraftwerk makes sense.

I never worked out whether Rheingold's naming themselves after a Wagner opera was ironic - there's certainly none of the histrionics of such as the Ring Cycle here.  Less open for debate, meanwhile, is whether German darkwave synthpoppers Wolfsheim took their name from a character from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby entirely sincerely - they admitted as much.  

Lovers of the genre likely still mourn to this day the duo's spectacularly ugly implosion in the mid-late 2000s when at their commercial peak (a platinum album and appearances on the German iteration of Top of the Pops, no less), amid a welter of trials, ceases and desists, and a reconciliation appears no likelier two decades on.  

The inclusion of The Sparrows and the Nightingales in our occasional darkwave feature this week rights a longstanding historic wrong.  Of all of the recent selections I have noted I could have sworn had been included on a List years ago but hadn't, this longstanding member of my all-time top ten favourite songs is by some way the most astonishing omission.  

I can't even claim I was saving it for a special occasion, though more through pure dumb luck than skill it does appear here almost exactly 35 years since it was first released (15/07/1991).

A word here for Wolfsheim's longest serving backers, Strange Ways Records of first Bremen and later Hamburg.  So synonymous with one another were band and label, it's easy to misremember Sparrows... as being the first ever Strange Ways release.  

It wasn't, not by at least a couple of years; but in terms of putting a label on the map with an early release, this haunting, sad meditation on The Great Gatsby's themes of security and predators represented as much of a statement of intent as, say, Pristine Christine did for Sarah Records right from the word go.

Hopefully there's plenty else to entertain you as usual this week, including:
  • more new or recent material from Special Friend, Les Big Byrd, Alison Cotton, Slippers, Penelope Isles and an absolute jackhammer from L'Rain (how have I managed to miss her up to now?).
  • a second selection since That Music List resumed from Language of Flowers, but the first since learning of their gigs in London, Paris and Hamburg this coming September - their first for nigh on eleven years.  A new album in a more dreampop direction is anticipated, though with the proceeds from last year's reissued Songs About You having funded its recording it seems unlikely that the old favourites will be lost from their set entirely.
  • a personal favourite from that little period in 1995-6 when there appeared to be a brand new Baby Bird album out every other week.  These comparatively simple, largely homespun recordings endure as my preferred Stephen Jones output to this day.
  • a reminder of the talents of the almost literally many tentacled Chicago musician Jeremy Jacobsen, aka The Lonesome Organist.  Any others present with me at the Camber Sands 2002 renewal of All Tomorrow's Parties will remember seeing this singularly dexterous performer occasionally operating as many as four pianos, keyboards or percussion instruments at once; I'm sure I didn't dream up him playing two keyboards with his feet at one stage.
  • some Italian horror soundtrack fun from Goblin, not just because it's characteristically great stuff, but also by way of a little get well soon to Sheffield indiepop performer, DJ and gig promoter (and dedicated horror fan) Daniel Hartley.  Thinking of you, mate - you've got this. 

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/06/2026).



EUROTASTIC
RADIORAMA - Vampires (1986) 


SPECIAL FRIEND - Clipping (2026) 

HUGGY BEAR - Herjazz (1993) 

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS – Come, Life, Shaker Life! (2020) 

MOLLY DRAKE – Poor Mum (196x/2007) 

PIXIES – Caribou (Peel Session) (1988) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: PJ Harvey
PJ HARVEY - Voyager (2026)
PJ HARVEY – Reeling (1993) 
 

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
HUMANOID - Stakker Humanoid (1988) 


LES BIG BYRD - Ruin Everything (2026) 

JOHN FOXX – This Jungle (1981) 

LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS – Summer’s Been and Gone (2004) 

ALISON COTTON - I Am! (2026) 

THE WHITE STRIPES – Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine (2003) 


WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER
WOLFSHEIM - The Sparrows and the Nightingales (1991) 

A SESSION OF SORTS: PJ Harvey
PJ HARVEY - The Colour of the Earth (2011)
PJ HARVEY - The Desperate Kingdom of Love (2004) 
 


THE LONESOME ORGANIST – Balloon Race Phenomenon (1999) 

SLIPPERS - Reading Lucy’s Diary (2026) 

GOBLIN – Markos (1977) 

BOB MOULD - Forecast of Rain (2020) 

BEANPOLE - Never Again (1998) 


I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
ALFIE TEMPLEMAN - Obvious Guy (2020) 

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
RHEINGOLD - Dreiklangsdimensionen (1980) 


L’RAIN - Soulless Cycle (2026) 

THE HEART THROBS – I, The Jury (1987) 

OMD - Metroland (2013) 

BABY BIRD - Steam Train (1995) 

PENELOPE ISLES - Thinking Seat (2026) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
MARTHA – Chekhov’s Hangnail (2016) 

THE LONG GOODBYE
THE FIELD MICE - Other Galaxies (1991) 

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Saturday, 11 July 2026

LIST 262 – 11/07/2026 (a 2018 collection)

Hello again,

Almost a week on, I've finally found a few minutes to collate my thoughts on a magical first musical festival experience for the kids last Saturday.

Just getting to Pop At The Lock and catching up with organisers Kev Birchall and Linda Yarwood, plus many old friends (some for the first time in easily a decade), would have counted as wonderful enough on its own.

The kids getting to see The School, favourites from our assorted playlists, improved it.

The School playing That Boy is Mine, the much-loved staple of the kids’ bedtime indiepop playlist, improved it further.

Finding and getting The School t-shirts their size in the merchandise stall improved it yet further still.

The School lending our youngest (“our superfan”, they enthused) a tambourine near the end of their set and bidding her to play along to Let It Slip… well, that was just the icing on the cake.

For our daughter - so worried beforehand about the festival all being a bit people-y and noisy for her – to be that engaged and enjoying herself was just a joy to behold.

Needless to say, a massive thanks to all of The School, and multi-instrumentalist Francesca Dimech in particular, for their kindnesses… and of course for a knocking good set, old favourites, striking newie Honeycomb and all.


  

(The School, Pop at the Lock, Middlewich 04/07/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Thanks, in fact, to everyone who took the time to engage and chat with both kids, and make them feel so at ease. There’s the danger, of course, that they’ll think every festy is as nice as this now. That’s not actually a bad thing to strive for, though, is it!

Other highlights of the day were plentiful, and included but were by no means limited to:
  • The aforementioned Francesca revisiting her captivating Word Salad repertoire, and reminding our kids not to smoke unless they wanted their carelessly discarded lighters to attract undead firefighters (it does happen).
  • Our son gasping at just how many swearywords MJ Hibbett fitted into two songs in particular (Hibbett regulars can probably guess which two).
  • Both Hibbett and Jetstream Pony’s Beth Arzy managing to elicit boos from the crowd over the World Cup’s dehydration breaks. The latter enjoyed slightly less success trying to get everyone to root for Mexico over England in the football, although the logic – a tournament win for Mexico would enrage Trump to the point of rupture – was impeccable.
  • Quad 90 and Foglights delivering sets that practically demand I explore them both further hereafter. The former’s inclusion on the bill makes so much sense with hindsight, offering up as they do a variant on the disco of Kev and Linda’s beloved Say She She, albeit filtered a little more through the punk-funk gauze of the likes of ESG. Arresting stuff. Foglights, an utterly new name to me previously but comprising one member each of The Cords and Stone Anthem, brought to mind a psychedelic folk take on the (often) drumless, vulnerable yearnings of Sarah Records mainstays Brighter. That counts as high praise in my book.
  • A wonderful set by The Sunbathers; concise, poignant (new song Strong Enough especially) and reflective. Lovely to see a vibraslap in action, too, and yes, the kids inevitably want one of those as well now.
  • Introducing our boy to the joys of record shopping/crate digging, as we rifled through the boxes of Pete Bee’s finest vinyl together and I found a couple of gap-fillers in my collection (one each from Delicate Vomit and The Garlands). One day, son, all these sevens, tens and twelves shall be yours and your sister’s (to say nothing of all the CDs and tapes).

A day to treasure, then. With no more Pop at the Lock or Indietracks, though, how are we going to top it? Wales Goes Pop, Glas-Goes Pop or – if we find a few quid behind the sofa – Indiefjord, perhaps?

****** 





(The Sunbathers, Pop at the Lock, Middlewich 04/07/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

That appearance by The Sunbathers was actually very timely in the context of this week's selection of tracks on That Music List, as A Loved Album takes in four songs from their beautiful debut longplayer from 2018.  

By turns wistful, romantic, pointed, fragile and comforting, A Weekend Away With... invites warm and respectful comparisons with the likes of Marine Girls and Young Marble Giants (the latter the subject of one of two cover versions played by the band at Pop at the Lock, fittingly enough), but there's an overriding yearning present which feels very much their own.  

I remember a Cambridge Music Reviews piece on the album upon its release which theorised that the duo's status as an East Midlands band feeds that sense of longing, this being an act which loves the sea but lives about as far from any coast in England as it's possible to get.  

I can buy into that theory entirely, having lived practically on the Scarborough seafront for five years around the turn of the century but now based almost as far inland in Sheffield as The Sunbathers themselves.  Every return trip to the North Yorkshire coast - and there are many - is immediately followed by the commencement of plans to do another one.  I would not be the least bit surprised were Julie and Paul the same.

Either way, A Weekend Away with... is a quietly triumphant body of work to be treasured, and it was wonderful to learn at Pop at the Lock that the release of a follow-up may not be at all far away now.

You'll have worked out already from the subtitle that The Sunbathers' aren't the only selections among this week's List to hail from 2018.  Everything does.  

This was, as has probably been mentioned ad nauseam by me on here now, the year in which That Music List paused for breath temporarily, only to fall asleep for well over seven years.  Indeed, some of the songs below were already pencilled in for inclusion in Lists 237, 238, etc. some time in spring of that year, only for events to supersede me somewhat.  

Ah well, I hope we're well on the way towards making up for lost time this year, with 41 posts (and counting) already.  

I also hope that there's a few tracks on here that stop you in your tracks and have you exclaiming, "eight years ago?  Really?".  I know there are for me, and in at least two cases poignantly so.  The Chills' Martin Phillipps and Tim Smith of Cardiacs (subject of a spine-tingling cover here by Alison Mathews) were still among us back then.  No longer.

The inclusions from Gwenno, Linda Guilala and Grace Petrie are all right up there among my personal highlights from the entire year, with Eus Keus by the first-named (a towering, mysterious single deserving of far better than the occasional glib epithets of "That Cheese Song" one sees and hears) just shading it over the second-named as my favourite single of 2018.  

Mucho Mejor prompted me to reappraise Linda Guilala's catalogue completely, having evidently not been paying sufficient attention to hook into all of the motorik, Stereolabby hums contained therein.  Not just another sunny, Spanish-language female-fronted indiepop act, this, their presence on Elefant Records - home of many such - notwithstanding.

Turn of the century hitmakers and antagonisers of rockist festival crowds par excellence, Daphne & Celeste were always more interesting, rounded people than a small handful of taunting, ad hominem singles gave them credit for.  Some impressive credits in Off-Broadway theatre and Wim Wenders-produced cinema helps say as much.

Knowing that, the fact that their 2010s comeback comprised collaborations with experimental musician and producer Max Tundra, often erring more on the side of outré electronica rather than pure pop (and even covering a Captain Beefheart track), becomes that bit less of a surprise.  It still served to annoy all of the right people all over again, though, especially those who turned up at their 2018 UK tour expecting just the hits.  Good.  

As such, Alarms doesn't go into the I Love Pop Music And I Will Fight You strand this time, but there's something no less fine from Janelle Monae which does instead.  

Finally, with visuals about as unsettling as the music which they accompany, I feel morally obliged to apologise in advance if The Third Eye Foundation's video gives you nightmares.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/06/2026).


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
LINDA GUILALA – Mucho Mejor 



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Saturday, 4 July 2026

LIST 261 – 04/07/2026 (Pop at the Lock special)

Hello again,

Well.  My gig spreadsheet (of course there's a spreadsheet...) informs me that the ongoing period of six years, eleven months and one week is the longest I have ever gone without attending either a music festival or alldayer in my near thirty-nine years' gig-going. 

The final in-person Indietracks festival of 2019 is still the most recent one, largely for reasons that have been expounded upon at length on these pages before now.  Happily, two of those reasons are now at the age where we can gently consider incorporating them into concert-related plans; and so it has come to pass that the kids will join Linda and I as we end our festy hiatus with a trip to Pop at the Lock at The Kings Lock, Middlewich this very day.

Together, the long round trip and (for them) late night finish may still constitute too great a test of endurance at this stage, and we'll obviously not push them on if they're telling us it's time to go home.  Even so, the little 'uns are very excited about doing something as grown up as watching loads of bands in a pub marquee, and we're so proud of them for giving it a go.  Hopefully that excitement won't turn to mortification once they witness their ancient dad indie shuffling in public.

Son enjoys MJ Hibbett, though it's perhaps wise if I take this opportunity to forewarn Mark that he may hear a lone voice insisting, "It's wind machine, amazing pear!!!" over the top of him if opting to perform (You Make Me Feel) Soft Rock.

Daughter, meanwhile, might yet cast aside her anxieties over the noise (it won't be as loud as you think, sweetheart; it's an indiepop festival) and crowds if The School see their way clear to playing 2012 album track That Boy is Mine, always the song on her bedtime indiepop compilation that she opts to play first.  By my rough calculations, she's heard it about 1,600 times now.  She still loves it as much as the first time.

If we're still going by then, I'd love the kids to see The Cords in action, primarily to demonstrate to them what two siblings still sufficiently young to count as relatable figures are capable of achieving.  I do wonder how many other youngsters - and especially young girls - Eva and Grace Tedeschi have inspired in three years on the gig circuit with their accessible, winning music and can-do attitude.  There'll be more yet.




(The Cords, Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 25/09/2025.  Pictures are author's own)

I have my own wishlist for the event, with all of those named so far lazered onto it.  In addition, it will be a pleasure as always to get the chance to take in The Sunbathers' delicate yet stirring acoustic vignettes; an unexpected treat to revisit the by turns macabre and ribald world of Francesca's Word Salad (the solo alias of Fran Dimech of The School, stepping off the subs' bench at short notice); and a welcome opportunity to try out more of the Glaswegian punk-funk disco duo Quad 90 (perhaps the closest thing to a stylistic outlier among this year's line-up, though not at all jarringly incongruous).


It's another perfectly put-together bill of fare, as is only to be expected from Kev Birchall and Linda Yarwood, officially the nicest people in the world of indiepop event organisation and the purveyors of impeccable DJ sets (simple driving principle; "good pop"), be that at either their own Recordsville nights or else at the request of big names on tour such as Saint Etienne and Teenage Fanclub.

It's also the last such bill, with Pop at the Lock being retired as an entity after this weekend's fifth edition, a year later than originally planned.  

It's been a joy to take in Kev and Linda's events whenever personal circumstances have permitted - we got to more of their previous Congleton-based onedayers Going up the Country (2012-2017) than we didn't - and heaven knows a step back from putting these on has been well earned.  As, for that matter, has the right to some better luck with the weather this time than has often been the case (few present will forget the non-stop rain and fetid cold of the June - that's June - 2016 renewal).

To serve as a reminder of the breadth of acts invited to play it, and as a thank you to Kev and Linda, this week's List comprises as many Pop at the Lock performers present and past as possible.  

The aforementioned The School get the A Loved Album treatment for what is still at the time of writing their most recent longplayer; almost four decades' on and off activity by both The Popguns and this year's headliners The Darling Buds is covered by A Session of Sorts and Then and Now respectively; and there's even been an opportunity to give the Francophone feature its first run out for a few weeks courtesy of Feutre.

By way of a finish, there's Meet Mr Marsden - not just my all-time most loved Spearmint track, but alongside Endless Art by A House a dead-heat for my favourite "list" song of them all.  How I'd gone over 260 Lists without including this one at least once before beats me.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/06/2026).


THE CORDS - Fabulist (2025) 

MJ HIBBETT & THE VALIDATORS - You’re a Tory Now (2019) 

QUAD 90 - Le Blank (2025) 

MILKY WIMPSHAKE - I Wanna Be Seen in Public with You (1997) 

JETSTREAM PONY - Self-Destruct Reality (2018) 


A LOVED ALBUM: The School - Wasting Away and Wondering (2015)
THE SCHOOL - All I Want From You Is Everything 
THE SCHOOL - Wasting Away and Wondering 
 

THEN AND NOW: The Darling Buds
THE DARLING BUDS - Lost Time (2026) 
THE DARLING BUDS – Spin (1987/1988) 
  


THE JUST JOANS - Johnny, Have You Come Lately? (2017) 

MIKI BERENYI TRIO - Island of One (2026) 

BABY ARMS - A Sign (demo) (2016) 

THE SUNBATHERS - You Love Me Too (2010) 
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

ALL ASHORE! - Radio Sunshine (2020)
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Popguns
THE POPGUNS - Who Never Found Love (2025)
THE POPGUNS - Where Do You Go (1988) 


FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE
FEUTRE - Les regards étrangers (2021) 


SWANSEA SOUND - Rock N Roll Void (2021) 

¡AY CARMELA! - Settle for Less (2016) 

BMX BANDITS - Edelweiss (1993) 


NIKKI & THE WAVES - Online Chess (2022) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
FALLING & LAUGHING - Friday Night at the Festival Disco (2016)
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Saturday, 27 June 2026

LIST 260 – 27/06/2026

Hello again,

Well, that was an awful lot of fun!  I had no idea the Belle and Sebastian/Saint Etienne double header at Halifax's Piece Hall would fall upon Father's Day when I bought the tickets last autumn, but as the perfect finish to that particular day I don't think anything else could have topped it.




(Belle and Sebastian, Piece Hall, Halifax 21/06/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Given the two acts to fit in before the strict 10.30pm local curfew, the "...and other songs" bit after the If You're Feeling Sinister run-through was shorter than it probably has been and will be for most of the rest of this tour, even before factoring in a short pause for a medical emergency also. I was still dead happy with it, though.

With the appreciable caveat of the lack of a full list on setlist.fm against which to check, I can say that unless they played any of them at Scarborough Futurist Theatre just the twenty five years ago this very week (26/06/2001, with me in the same Sarah Records t-shirt as I had on last Sunday), this will have been the first time I'd have seen all of Seeing Other People, Me and the Major, Fox in the Snow, If You're Feeling Sinister, Mayfly and The Boy Done Wrong Again live (as well as later tracks Reclaim the Night, Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Sleep the Clock Around).

Hopefully this link to my recording from the night of Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying will work fine.  My gift to you all. 

No playing of their new World Cup track in the end, much less any mention of football at all other than in its rightful place deep into Another Sunny Day.  No matter; I've taken the liberty of including the similarly new but otherwise far more irreverent World Cup track from Lynks in this week's selection.

As for Saint Etienne, you may recall I'd wondered out loud on here last week as to whether their set would eschew much from last year’s International album and basically be a victory lap of hits. Turns out that's exactly what it was, with only Glad from that long-player making the cut on the night. I don't particularly mind that; heaven knows they've absolutely earned the right.  They did manage a segue into 7 Ways to Love for those who know!

And so to this week's other selections apart from Lynks.  The headline for me, I think, is the return of The Durutti Column.  Note the lack of italics; this isn't an appraisal of the enigmatically titled 1980 debut album by Vini Reilly, but rather an actual return of the Durutti Column. 

Vini's previously prolific nature has been stifled appreciably by his trio of strokes over 2010-11 and resultant difficulties in playing guitar as before, to say nothing of a financial hardship exacerbated by intransigence in the DWP benefits system.  Indeed, Renascent is his first collection of new material since that incapacitation, 2012's Songs for Pauline - the only other "new" release in the interim - actually being an abandoned album from 1983.

Happy to report (is "in spite of those difficulties" too crass to tack on?), the playing on such as lead track Liars is essentially still as agile, translucent, delicate and expertly crafted as ever, though with Vini now 72 years of age and regular drummer (and manager) Bruce Mitchell 86, any drop-off would have been forgivable, in truth.

Wittingly or otherwise, the endorsements in the past year or so from everyone from Dev Hynes to Harry Styles might just have done their bit in helping raise the band's profile again ahead of this return to meaningful action, and BBC Radio 6 Music's Marc Riley reassuringly wasted no time in bigging up Liars upon release.  

Quite what, if anything, lies ahead in terms of accompanying concerts is conjectural given the performers' relative antiquity and (where applicable) health issues, but one can be certain that any venture back into the live circuit wouldn't struggle for ticket sales.

How representative of Vini's body of work my four selections for A Session of Sorts are is for you to scrutinise at leisure, and the dominating, jackhammer electronic percussion of Arpeggiator (from 1987's The Guitar and Other Machines) possibly polarises opinion as much now as ever it did.  Good, let it.  It's a firm favourite of mine, either way.

Elsewhere, the following may or may not count as highlights:
  • The first ever double-decker Then And Now.  With Panda Bear and Sonic Boom continuing their hitherto fruitful partnership with an out of the park knockout of a new drone-pop single which encapsulates so many of their respective strengths, it seemed the perfect opportunity to marry that to a previous highlight each from two performers clearly sharing equal billing.  Angel, in particular, is one I came to a lot later than I might ordinarily have done, its omission from my CD copy of Indie Top 20 Volume VIII owed to the track's near eight-minute length.
  • Other new or recent additions to my listening diet from The Linda Lindas, Grace Ives, Mike D, My Lo-Fi Heart and Otoboke Beaver. 
  • Electro People by Fox, which I briefly considered badging as an Isn't That...? feature.  I think its use as Kenny Everett's theme tune from more or less the time of the single's release is a bit too well known for it to surprise many, though.
  • A few weeks on from including his video cameo for The Loft, some more Stewart Lee, this time the setting to music of his tour de force dismantling of Paul Nuttalls of the UKIPs [SIC] by Asian Dub Foundation.  Can I nominate someone to do the same to his Richard Hammond routine, please?
  • Tracks by To My Boy, Topper and Those Dancing Days which I'd have put money on my having included in a List before now, but evidently hadn't.  The last-named is an especially egregious omission; it should really have gone into my collection of eponymous songs (q.v. List #232), had I had my two braincells in alignment at the time.
  • Following on from last week's bang up to date power pop treat from Wishy, an example of the genre from an altogether different era courtesy of The Raspberries.  Some will know already, of course, that this sexually suggestive 1972 US smash hit was primarily written and sung by future Hungry Eyes performer Eric Carmen, long before his hard rock went soft.  Matron.
J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 22/06/2026).


LYNKS - Kick the Ball (2026) 

THE WEDDING PRESENT - Jet Girl (1995) 

THE LINDA LINDAS - Burning Out (2026) 

FINITRIBE - Ace Love Deuce (Steve Osborne Remix) (1991) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Durutti Column
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Liars (2026)
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Arpeggiator (1987) 
 

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
THE HIDDEN CAMERAS - The International MMA - The Mild Mannered Army (2002) 


GRACE IVES - Stupid Bitches (2026) 

FOX - Electro People (1981) 

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION ft STEWART LEE - Comin’ Over Here (2020) 

DAVID LYNCH – Are You Sure (2013) 


GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ
AIRSTREAM - Airstream (1992) 

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
THE MOTORCYCLE BOY – Big Rock Candy Mountain (1987) 


MIKE D - What We Got (2026) 

THOSE DANCING DAYS - Those Dancing Days (2007) 

THE RASPBERRIES – Go All the Way (1972) 

MY LO-FI HEART - I Know It So Well (2026) 


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